Venerable Boļeslavs Sloskāns

Boļeslavs Sloskāns (Belarusian: Баляслаў Слосканс, 1893-1981) was a Latvian Roman Catholic bishop and a survivor and memoirist of the Soviet Gulag. He was born 31 August 1893 near Stirniene. In 1911 Boļeslavs Sloskāns entered the Saint Petersburg Roman Catholic Theological Academy, Russia. He was ordained priest for the Metropolitan Archdiocese of Mohilev by Bishop Jan Cieplak on 21 January 1917 in St. Petersburg. He then served as a parish priest in Russia for several years. He even renounced Latvian citizenship so that he could remain in Russia after Latvian independence. After Bishop Cieplak was appointed archbishop of Vilnius on 14 December 1925, Fr. Sloskāns was appointed bishop on 5 May 1926. He was ordained titular bishop of Cillium in secret by Bishop Michel d'Herbigny, S.J., on 10 May 1926 in Moscow. Bishop Aleksander Frison was also ordained during the same secret ceremony. On 13 August 1926 Bishop Sloskāns was appointed apostolic administrator of the Archdiocese of Mohilev as well as apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Minsk. On the same day he assisted Bishop d'Herbigny in the ordination of Anton Malecki as titular bishop of Dionysiana and apostolic administrator for Leningrad. On 17 September 1927 Bishop Sloskāns was arrested in Minsk by the Soviet secret police, or OGPU. He was then sentenced to three years in Solovki prison camp, which has often been called "The First Camp of the GULAG", based on false evidence. He was released in October 1930 after completing his sentence. On 8 November 1930 he was arrested again just one week after arriving back in Mohilev. He served an additional two years in prison until he was repatriated to Latvia on 22 January 1933 in exchange for an accused Soviet spy in the custody of the Latvian government. After leaving the Soviet Union, Bishop Sloskāns traveled to Rome. The Holy See had publicly acknowledged the episcopal ordinations of Bishops Sloskāns and Malecki only in 1929 when both were in Soviet prisons.